There’s a beautiful text of Jesus, where he says, when you give a meal, don’t invite the members of your family, don’t invite your rich neighbours. When you give a really good meal, invite the poor, the lame, the disabled and the blind. And you will be blessed.

Building a community…

At L’Arche [started in 1964], by fairly stunning contrast, people with intellectual disabilities (the residents) live and work side by side with the nondisabled (their assistants) as peers, in what L’Arche likes to call “mutually transformative relationships.” Because the disabled have an equal hand in setting the tone (often hilarious) and pace (unpredictable) of the homes they live in, they can fairly call these communities their own. They’re the residents, the co-bosses, not the guests. We, the able-bodied, are the ones who have to be integrated into their world, not the other way around. They are honoured as people in their own right, with a contribution to make, no matter how subtle that contribution may be.

“Vanier discovered,” the Templeton Prize citation declares, “that those people who society typically considers the weakest enable the strong to recognize and welcome their own vulnerability.”

The franchise bar, with perfect foreknowledge, will take what is left of their money in what will be (in the end) a hopelessly futile attempt at legal justice in Ontario. Talk to your premier and your small business loan provider not your a franchise lawyer.

This excerpt is from Chris Hedges’ column talking about resisting the military violence in Afghanistan.

After the small talk, franchisees are always taking about the violent effects of their work on their families. The missed events, spousal tension, fear of meeting the mortgage…the end of hope.

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Do something, no matter how small.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Don’t be afraid.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

Like this:

Authority and control has historically opposed compassion and freedom.

To attack despair in the most vulnerable peoples demands great courage. To call others to life: to live a still-difficult life, to not allow your heart to harden, is a message of compassion, kindness and solidarity worthy of any world leader.

Canada’s Governor General Michaëlle Jean dances with Lorne Duquette, from Mistawasis First Nation in Saskatchewan, during her visit yesterday at the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer, France. (CP/Andrew Vaughan)

Yesterday – well it seemed so cool
When I walked you home, kissed goodnight
I said “it’s love” you said “alright”
It’s funny how I could never cry
Until tonight and you pass by
Hand in hand with another guy
You’re dressed to kill and guess who’s dying?

Loneliness is a crowded room
Full of open hearts, turned to stone
All together all alone
All at once my whole world had changed
Now I’m in the dark, off the wall
Let the strobe light up them all
I close my eyes and dance till dawn

Now I know I must walk the line
Until I find an open door
Off the street onto the floor
There was I – many times a fool
I hope and pray, but not too much
Out of reach is out of touch
All the way is far enough